We are expecting rain today through Thursday at least.

We have a tropical storm warning here in Gainesville on Thursday, which means I probably need to secure potted plants and such.

ETA: Watching Accuweather report and the exact center of the cone of probability takes it straight through Gainesville and Jacksonville.

Yikes! Stay safe!

Is everybody ready? I'm sure this thing will have a name by tonight.

Sort of early to tell now, but it looks like it's going a bit farther north than they first thought, but we're still expected to get more than 8 inches of rain. That's a lot of rain! Luckily, I'm on a rise and we have that big retention pond. No doubt, it will be full after this. The ducks will be happy about that.

On a bad note, I can't find my flashlight, but I have lots of candles all set up to go, so not too worried. GRU (our electric co.) is saying we may be out of power for two days if it goes through here, but I doubt that.

Have to finish getting the plants ready today. Brought some in last night, but most are just getting pushed up against the west wall, where they'll be safe.

Wet, wet, wet here in PInellas - flood warnings are in effect >= P

Carol, our ground is completely saturated, so if we get 8 inches of rain, my courtyard will probably have standing water.

Many years ago, when I lived in Bradenton, a TS went through. I thought I was safe because my apartment was on a rise, but the drain for the street was right in front of my house, so all the water ran down to that point from both ends of the street. My utility room door started banging and I stepped out onto the carport to shut it -- into 3 inches of water. They guy next door had left his car out on the street so his roommate who was an EMT could get out if he needed to, and the water was up to his windows. Needless to say, that car was totalled, which was so sad because it was a very old car with only minimum insurance, and he was a struggling student.

So far, Alachua Co. is only under a TS Watch, not a warning, but that means nothing when those right side outer bands hit you. Looks right now like it's heading more towards Tallahassee.

I have lots of family in Tally. Here it's just been mostly drizzling with sudden deluges.we have a canal behind our house so it might get interesting.

It's Hermine now, up to Tropical storm status and still moving very slowly in those warm Gulf waters.

Well, from what I am seeing, the meteorologists are saying that the east side of the storm is going to do the most damage, and that's headed straight for us. I have all my vulnerable potted plants inside, and hoping that the walls of the courtyards protect the things left out there. Nothing else I can do.

I hope y'all stay safe, here in Tampa we should just get tons of rain and some flooding, but storm should meet land much north of us.

Looks like it's heading for Apalachicola and Accuweather has it as a Cat. 1 hurricane when it hits. Not out of the realm of possibility, since it's 250 miles away with 60 mph winds now.

Take care, anyone up near that area. Hope they can get all the fishing and shrimp boats to safety.

You never can tell with hurricanes. Charley was a Cat. 1, supposed to follow the coast up to St. Pete, but it turned into Charlotte Harbor and once it hit that warm water, it went from a Cat. 1 to a Cat. 4 really quickly.

I've lived with hurricanes all my life, and they still scare me, because they are so unpredictable. I'll probably lose power when it hits.

Just looked at the radar, and N. Central is about to be hit with some heavy rain from the other bands.

Look at the outer bands to the right at the end of this video. Look where Gainesville is. That's what's hitting us right now. Everything from St. Pete up is getting slammed.

https://icons.wunderground.com/data/storm_radar/at201609_radar.gif

Looks like all the beaches from Sarasota north are getting flooded. Haven't heard from anything further south.

We just had some heavy downpours here in Jax. I heard on the news they just released sewage into Tampa Bay due to the flooding. Why do they do that?

Because if they don't, it will run over into the city. We have lots of rain, but wind doesn't seem to be too bad. My courtyard is protecting me from most of it, but I can see the tops of the trees waving. Doesn't look too bad so far. We've had worse thunderstorms.

O.K., the lights just flickered and I heard something hit the roof. It's getting serious now.

My family in Tally said they lost power. The rain wasn't too bad yet though.

And if course they are under a Tornado watch.

I don't know how they expect us to watch for tornadoes in the pitch black dark. If I hear a train coming, I'll know it's a twister, because the closest railroad track is in Waldo along 301.

Stay safe!

I hope everybody is okay this morning and with power, we had a lot of rain in my area.

Silvia

Everything is good here. Winds knocked down a chinaberry between my house and a neighbor's. Unfortunately it didn't knock both of them down. Nobody's house was damaged by the falling tree.

My nerves are shot but it wasn't as bad as some people around here. Yesterday we had violent storms - howling wind, lightning, torrential rain. We had 3 tornado warnings in my area alone. Last night was scary with the same thing then the power went down at 3:00 am. Was out until after 9. Now my phone is messed up and there is a lake outside my house on the South side. The frogs sure were happy. I shudder to think about a direct hit with a full-blown hurricane.

ritaweeda, you may live close to me in Hernando County. Too many tornado warnings, too close to our house. The wind and pounding rain woke me at 2:00 am and continued to 3:00 when it really ramped up. So much damage to people's homes and cars. It will be difficult for many people to recover from the losses. Not too many limbs down from my trees, but the neighbor's chinaberry dropped many large limbs into my yard. There are also huge limbs that broke off and are leaning on the fence. Not a good tree for coastal Florida! Michael, I pray that tree will finally break to the ground. The blooms give me terrible asthma problems, including headaches, and of course, spread hundreds of seedlings into my yard!

We had a Chinaberry tree in Tampa, it got huge. Then there was a bad storm and it split right in two. Half of it went down on the fence. Glad it wasn't close to the house. It was a problem tree, weak limbs, berries dropping all over, some kind of weevil always got on it but I have to say it was very graceful and Oriental looking, a shame they are such a hazard.

Rita, good news to hear that you are okay. I would be scared in your situation too, the weather is something that we cannot control.

Silvia

Hermine roared through Gainesville at about 1:30 a.m. and at 2 a.m. our power went out. Was waked up by two huge booms, and then one smaller one, which was transformers blowing when tree limbs fell on them. Just got it back on about 30 minutes ago. They're saying that anyone who still doesn't have power will have it before 5 p.m. tomorrow.

It was a nightmare laying here with the wind and rain whipping all around and not being able to see a thing. My pigeon peas are all down, and I had to trim the larger one up quite a bit to get it to stand. Every time I put the stake in the ground, it fell, because the ground was so saturated with water. If my courtyard hadn't been covered with cardboard it would have been a mud puddle.

My poor banana tree is leaning badly. I'm going to have to find a way to bolster that so it doesn't fall in the future. Right now, I put what I had -- two 5-gallon buckets full of soil -- up against it to keep it upright. I'll have to build a corral for it, but that will have to wait until my maintenance man gets back next week so he can help me.

Most of the street lights went out, and some major intersections were nightmares, so I heard. Shands and UF both lost power, so of course, and understanably, those three things came before restoring residential lights.

You know, GRU may have high rates, but they are pretty responsive when things like this happen. Since I don't have a t.v., I'm going to have to go try to see what happened elsewhere in the state.

Hope everyone is safe. Aside from having all the flowers blown off, everything else is fine.

17,000 lost power and we lost 37 trees in Gainesville. Guess I'd better get to guerilla gardening me some trees!

Just looked at pictures of flooding and damage in other places, and I feel so blessed. It makes you feel very helpless.

We feel pretty lucky here as well. Even though both front & back porches were underwater, we never even had a brown-out & only a small amount of water in our garage. Family & friends on the island next to ours didn't have it so easy